Are Everton getting too excited over Usmanov links?

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Fans of Everton are getting excited. Some fans of Arsenal are getting angry. The reason? Alisher Usmanov.

Evertonians have already spent his billions, turning the Scousers into champions; Gooners are sitting there saying “that could have been us”.

The truth is this is all very presumptuous. Usmanov has not invested in Everton, has not started spending billions, so it is a lot of fuss about nothing.

What Usmanov has said is interesting, however.

“Should there be a proposal or a possibility to invest in them with good potential returns, I would consider the deal.”

Usmanov has made a lot of his billions making smart investments. What he is talking about with Everton is investing in them. Most interesting is his “good potential returns” comment. This indicates that he would be investing in Everton to make money, like he did with Arsenal.

He invested around £180,000,000 into Arsenal, with a £550,000,000 return. Not a bad profit after 11 years. It should also be noted that bar buying shares, he did not put any other money into the club.

Some recent quotes around his sale of his Arsenal shares make interesting reading.

“When I bought the stake in Arsenal I believed that football brands would be able to generate a profit”.

So in two quotes in a short space of time, we have learnt the true intentions of Usmanov owning football clubs.

He is looking to invest in them to make money. Not to treat them as a play thing like the Manchester City’s owners and Roman Abramovich.

It should also be remembered that having $13bn “worth” is very different to having a lot of disposable cash.

Both City and Abramovich have plunged £1bn into their respective clubs, financing transfers, salaries and ground improvements. In City’s case, that is over a 10 year period. Abramovich has now been at Chelsea for 15 years.

Anyone that thinks that Usmanov will turn up at Everton and throw millions at them to turn them into a force is deluded.

For a start, football is a different world to when Abramovich turned up.

Roman could spend £100million a year on new players, and that was double what Manchester United or Arsenal was spending.

This summer Fulham, Leicester and West Ham all spent £100million on transfers. Everton themselves spent £89million.

It would probably take a good £200million a year investment over 3 or 4 years for Everton to become a top 4 regular, let alone competitors, taking into account transfer fees and the wages – Everton currently pay about £100m in salaries less than Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool.

Usmanov is a very rich man, but his wealth is tied up in investments, in other companies. Does he have £1bn to throw at them, with no guarantee of return? And that is before we even discuss the £500m needed for their new stadium.

I imagine what Usmanov thinks when he sees Everton is a massively undervalued club. A huge chance to make some money, grow his wealth even quicker then he did at Arsenal.

With Everton valued at £200million they are clearly undervalued. When you consider that Tottenham – a similar sized club in terms of historic and recent success – were valued in 2016 at £450million.

Everton need a new stadium, I can see a scenario where Usmanov is thinking the follow:

Spend £100million on the remaining Everton shares – becoming co-owner with friend Farhad Moshiri taking their joint investment to £180million.

Spend £500million on the new ground, whilst selling Goodison Park to Usmanov’s own development company for a nominal fee (the ground it sits on is worth about £6million). Usmanov then develops Goodison into flats for profit.

New buld flats in that area are going for about £300,000, that should yeald about a £150,000 profit per flat. That’ll generate about £80million profit for Usmanov.

So in total, Usmanov would have invested £680million in Everton – with a return already of £80,000,000.

In the time it will take to build the stadium, and with very little debt repayments, over a 10-year period, the club could well be worth nearer £1bn. All with little investment on the playing side.

£1bn would not be unreachable with a 55,000 seater stadium, a top 7 side and new TV deals. It is similar to what Tottenham are worth once the new ground is taken into account.

This is all back of a fag packet stuff, but with Usmanov saying he is looking for good returns, he is clearly talking about money, not trophies.

So Evertonians, cancel that bus period, Arsenal fans, stop talking rubbish about what we could have had.

Usmanov is not going to turn Everton into Manchester City or PSG.

Keenos

Tottenham stadium builders contracted until November

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As each day goes past, another story hits social media about the major issues at the new Tottenham Stadium.

We blogged at the back end of July that the stadium would not be ready until October at the earliest. The blog got a lot of abuse from Tottenham fans who claimed that we were jealous, bitter, and asked how did we, as Arsenal fans, now more then them about the state of the stadium?

The truth is that it does not matter what club you support to know the state of play of a construction site if you are within the industry.

A Spurs fans at University in Reading, for example, would know less than an Arsenal fan who recruits construction workers to the Tottenham Stadium project, or a Sunderland fan who has been operating a tower crane on site for the last 2 years.

We blogged in July that the stadium would not be ready until October, but it took the club until August to release the information to the fans. Up until that point the company line was “only Fulham will be at Wembley”.

In fact, there were rumours circulating in March that the stadium would not be ready until after the second international break (October) at the earliest.

It is here where Daniel Levy needs to hang his head in shame for the way he has treated Spurs fans – which all club rivalry aside has been a disgrace.

He knew when season ticket payments were due that the stadium would not be completed before the season started. He knew that it would not be ready for Liverpool – their second home game of the season. He knew that there was a chance that the ground would not even be completed this year.

And yet he oversaw the club telling the fans a story, a fallacy, and selling the countries most expensive season tickets based on this. He took money off hard working football fans knowing what he was selling did not exist.

There have been reports that those who bought cooperate boxes are set to be refunded 50% for the 2018/19 season. Normal fans are getting a game by game refund and then having to buy tickets at Wembley. The excitement of returning to the Lane has been diminished.

Fans have been lied to, and Levy is now hiding behind “health and safety” as a justification for the stadium not being completed. To try and avoid points deductions. To prepare his defence against angry fans miss-sold season tickets.

Part of the reason is Health and Safety, but this is not the only issues. The reality is, the stadium is no where near finished.

As every day goes on, you hear more stories from more people involved in the project about problems on the stadium:

  • Slingers (operatives who direct cranes for lifting operations) refused to take work onsite.. Management were demanding slingers to undertake dangerous lifts. After a recent death in London, slingers are refusing to undertake the danger lifts. They are getting sacked. Problem is there is so much work in London, and so few slingers out of work that no one wants to work there. Lifting operations literally ground to a halt at times.
  • There was a well documented problem with the seats where 15,000 of them were injected with the wrong dye. These are still being replaced.
  • The poor weather earlier this year put the project back two weeks as they were unable to get the roof on.
  • When tested, the fire alarm system failed. The entire system requires re-wiring. As it had been plastered over and the walls finished, these need to be ripped out, re-wired and then made good. This was discovered 2 weeks ago. It is expected to take 4 months to complete.
  • The wrong lines were reportedly installed for emergency telephones; fibre optic was used instead of copper.
  • Ultimately, people just do not want to work there – it is a highly pressurised job and operatives are being coerced into working long hours. Its location is also reducing the worker pool as people will not commute. London is so busy at the moment that you can pick up 10-12 hours a day in Central London where the site is more relaxed, slower. Agencies are struggling to find anyone to fill the skills gap.

There have been plenty of reports across social media of electrical companies having their contracts extended to Christmas. Of Northern based tradesman who have been put up in digs being told to expect to still be here in 2019.

Tottenham are reportedly trying to put all the blame on Mace, hiding behind Health and Safety in order to justify playing at two home stadiums this season. But they installed themselves as Project Managers so knew every step of the way of the problems the project faced.

The truth is the stadium was never going to be ready.

When construction began, everyone in the industry knew that they were trying to complete a 30 month job in 18 months. It was always an overly ambitious deadline driven by greed.

Something like the weather early this year is not their fault, but when you are working to such a tight schedule you can not afford a 2 weeks delay.

Spurs should have been honest and realistic 12 months ago. Hired Wembley for 2 years and ensured the new ground was completed on time. Sold season tickets at Wembley and ensure the project was completed, with safety certificates, for 2019.

Instead Levy was driven by the greed – or need – for the stadium to be completed for the start of the 2018/19 season. Spurs needed the income to cover spiralling costs. The problem they now face is they do not have a stadium ready, and costs are still spiralling.

The project will end up costing over £1bn, and I would be surprised if they play at the new ground this season.

Keenos

Goodbye Joel Campbell

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7 years after joining the club, and 5 years after obtaining a work permit enabling him to play in England, Joel Campbell is finally set to leave the club.

The Costa Rican international is set to join Italian side Frosinone Calcio on a 3-year-deal.

Campbell has always divided fans – something which I have never understood.

On one side you have the fans who would defend him, say how talented he was, that he was never given a chance by Arsene Wenger and was essentially ruined. It was agenda driven.

The other side – the majority of Arsenal fans – saw a player who was not really good enough to wear the shirt, and regards of their position on the manager, felt he probably should have been sold in 2014 after a couple of decent World Cup games.

The reality is, those that “rated” him, and still do, only do that to attack Wenger, not because they think he is any good.

Even over the summer, I have people claiming that he had a lot of potential and was still good enough for Arsenal.

Campbell is now 26, so we really should stop talking about him like he is a bright young talent. In 40 appearances for Arsenal, he scored just 4 goals. So those saying he “always impressed for Arsenal” are clearly seeing him through biased glasses.

On loan at Villarreal, Sporting and Betis, he also struggled to break through into the first team.

In the 3 seasons he spent on loan, he started just 25 league games. If he was not good enough for those teams, he is certainly not good enough for The Arsenal.

https://twitter.com/pr_whoru/status/1029812862712270848?s=21

As I said, the support of him by some fans will always baffle me. It seems they rated him purely because the old manager did not. And at the same time they called Theo Walcott “dead wood”.

Campbell follows Chuba Akpom, Lucas Perez & Jeff Reine-Adélaïde out of the club, continuing the process of removing those players who are simply not good enough from the squad.

Still plenty to go…

Keenos